AF Get-Togethers

[CapnAwesome]

Watch your back, mate. Pretty much anything you don't throw on the barbie is likely to bite you, sting you and/or kill you. If you have a near death experience be sure to come back and tell us all about it.

Haha, thanks. Near death experiences are my specialty. I've almost died a few times in my relatively young life (I'm 32) I actually think very few human beings have been as close to death as I was this one time.

True story: I was free-solo (ropeless) rock climbing in Yosemite national park on what was a very easy route for me and was on the very last segment (with a 1500 foot fall underneath me.) Well lo and behold it was wet. At this point I could climb down the whole thing or do a few easy moves on wet rock to get to the end of the climb. I committed to the moves and slipped and started sliding down the rock face to my certain death. Out of desperation (or rather instinct) I put my foot out and stopped myself on a ledge maybe the width of a couple of fingers that was coated in pine needles. By all accounts it shouldn't have even stopped my fall. I stepped from there to the end of the climb and walked down the trail. Now I had a friend who was also soloing the route in front of me, he watched me slip and was certain that he was about to watch me hurdle off the cliff to my death. In a weird way this experience has always given me a false sense of invincibility.